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Babies and Mawmets and Poppets

…and every other name but “Doll”!

Dolls are hard to document. We’re absolutely sure that children used them, but extant examples are hard to come by, just like other toys. Little people made dolls of pebble and bits of wood, bundles of rags or even a “corncob wrapped in a handkerchief” (as in Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder) Dolls get played hard and loved and destroyed….. That being said, there are a few out there and some in paintings (especially late period, such as this <<<< of Arabella Stuart) and a lot in inventories and descriptions.

Also, “doll” isn’t a period term, “poppet” is, and “baby” seems to have been used, as well, and “mawmet”, “puppe” and “tocke”.

Peg and Stump Dolls – …are found occasionally. Originally carved from bits of branch or kindling, or fired in a solid piece of clay or even metal, the modern equivalent is the “Peg Doll” of the sort starting with the 2nd gallery.

The period inspirations

German Tocke

Bartholomew Baby (modern recreation in period shape)

Hurstwic (Norse)

A Kreussler doll (clay, german, late period)

A set of Kreussler dolls

Pewter doll late 16th century Bulls Wharf London British Museum 2009 8020 5

Jointed Dolls – Multi-piece toys date back a long way, too. Toys with wheels seem to date right to the first use of the wheel, although that’s only a guess. Jointed dolls….well, the examples are from closer in time, but how far back? We don’t know. Solid pieces exist like the peg dolls, but were they toys or “religious objects”? We don’t really know, but there are examples of both solid and jointed toys that pre-date SCA period.

…and Peter Crossman’s toy picture with a lovely jointed doll. He does a lot of period things from extant examples for museums! http://www.crossmancrafts.co.uk/?s=toy or you can go to his gallery page and scroll down.

A cropped bit of that picture. Very pixelated, but….

…and another design of his, which seems to be made in the shape of a Bartholomew Baby. This is a work in progress as of this fall, so I’m guessing there will be more soon. Also, I made a set of silhouettes of various extant dolls, and the last is another modern version.

Peter Crossman’s Babies

Silhouettes for turning your own

Bartholomew Baby (modern recreation in period shape)

(more to come)

Page Created 4/22/15 and published 6/2/15 (C)M. Bartlett
Last Update 5/4/17